Walking The Dog

Summer skies over the Yorkshire Dales and my mind is set to rest mode. But that rest is not totally restful; there is a niggle ... a memory, a hint of childhood, something that unsettles slightly - a light brush stroke of discomfort; a gossamer breath of discombobulation and a 'Woah! Wait a moment!' moment of 'that's-not-right!' - we're about as far from the sea as it is possible to be in middle Britain and yet, I can hear the distinctive Peep! Peep! of oystercatchers and the piercing cry of curlew. Here -  in the blue skies of the North Yorkshire dales and along the footpaths - and above the endless miles of drystone walls are birds that should be at the coast.  Oystercatchers, with their distinctive red pliers attached to their heads feed on - you've guessed it - oyster beds. All along the coastline of the British Isles, their distinctive cry is the call of summer. Drowned out somewhat by the banter of seagulls but sharp and ...

It could be argued that I watch too many films. Arguably - and more accurately - it is not the watching of too many films that I am guilty of, but the  purchasing of films in abundance: more per month than I could ever watch, apparently - or so I have been told. But this is probably accurate, as I frequently have to explain myself, when asked have you seen such-and-such a film and find that I have no option but to reply yes, sort of. By 'sort of' I mean that I have seen bits of the said film. Sometimes, enough to get the gist of plot and theme and story, but more often a taste that is puzzling and unsatisfactory and teasing in a cruel you-can-see-me-if-you-can-catch-me sort of way. And I never have time to catch it. It is the lot of a mother - she who washes and cooks and clears and cleans and finds the odd socks (sometimes) and walks the dogs and feeds them and wrestles the ironing-mountain and answers the phone and waters the garden and bakes the bread and never sits still ...

Well this has been a rather different day. First - just as I was beginning to think it was time to stretch; to push my uncle's legs off my tummy and wonder about what might be causing the beginnings of an itch behind my right ear - our mum woke the whole house up. She ran around upstairs - at 6:08am - telling our two-legged sisters to get up. Because she thought they'd slept in. Because she thought it was 8:06am. Because she hadn't put her glasses on. She then giggled loudly for about ten minutes. Which our two-legged sisters thought a bit odd. And a bit unfeeling, given that they would much rather still be asleep. So we got an early breakfast. Littlest - our smallest two-legged sister - did sleep in after that. And had to take her breakfast to eat on the bus on the way to school. Mum had stopped giggling by the time she had breakfast. I think the look on Littlest's face probably helped. Anyway ... next we overheard the W word. And jumped around an...

Honestly - "Aaaaargh!" Can I really not think of a better title? No, not this morning - an alternative using the words I'm thinking would probably be unpublishable. Yesterday's blog was also entitled "Aaaaargh!" For different reasons - which I will get onto later - but yesterday's blog DESPITE SAVING IT DURING A BRIEF WINDOW WITH INTERNET IN LONDON YESTERDAY LUNCHTIME disappeared overnight. All those words and pictures evaporated off the screen. So this is definitely an "Aaaaargh!" moment. "Aaaaargh!" x2 if you like. And there's a big Grrr! prowling through my head trying to remember why I was thinking "Aaaaargh!" yesterday. It started with a benign quote with eight of the most inspirational words I have ever read - Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known Carl Sagan I grew up watching Sagan's wonderful television series, Cosmos. It was perfect - from the velvety enthusiasm of his voice,...

Chocolate cake. Most of us who bake probably have a favourite chocolate cake recipe - the one that always works; that forgives being made in a rush or once without eggs (added to the cake tin five minutes after it was initially placed in the oven ... even I didn't think I'd get away with that one); that tolerates the fickle heat of different ovens and different tins and without fail, at first sniff of it baking, brings back delicious memories of old friends and old holidays. And picnics and sand between toes and laughter and blustery walks and holding hands and eating too much and wind in your hair and squinting in the sun and dancing in the rain and dragonflies hitching a ride and castles and hill-tops and freezing cold lochs and a long walk with a black and white cat. This is my favourite chocolate cake recipe. Written by the dearest of old friends, on this scrap of paper, over twenty years ago. (Annotated by he who should have known better and me. He was right abo...

Warning : skip the next eight paragraphs or so - see  **  below - if you just want to read about dogs and parks and truths and avoid an inner ear-wagging about a Twit. Your blood pressure will thank you. The Earth may not. 'Taking with one hand and giving back with the other': is that a definition of smarmy? Especially when 'the other' hand is a smaller and substantially more smug hand. Take for example, the Twit who, while recalibrating the boundaries of smugness, reverses years of research and reason with an ill-conceived raid on the funding of environmental protection projects. Then attempts to appease for his plundering by donating some of his own money - his own salary no less - to a project that was directly and adversely affected by his earlier fiscal thievery. Or did the Twit simply not know that the two were connected? Or is this all fake news? Again. The Twit's reported raid on domestic environmental protection funding is just the start. But th...

Spring. ' The Spring has sprung, the grass is rizz, I wonder where the boidie is ' - words often wrongly attributed to Ogden Nash; instead penned by the more prolific writer, Anonymous.  How do you judge when Spring has sprung? For me, it is stepping outside and the surprise, after a winter of damp, earthy smells, of breathing in warm, green air.  And the jostling, yellow gatherings, bursting above the grass. Or as Wordsworth rather more eloquently put it  " All at once I saw a crowd, A host of yellow daffodils, ... fluttering and dancing in the breeze " I neither flutter nor dance in breezes. Nor do Four-legged-friend and Bertie Baggins. They do however like a spot of lazing in the Spring sun. Particularly when that lazing involves watching me; gardening. Garden watching is all very well and companionably pleasing even if motivated by we-know-there-are-dog-biscuits-in-one-of-those-gardening-jacket-pockets-so-we'll-...